Related Articles

Rift Loot Guides: Lake of Solace Puzzle and Treasures

Our new series takes a look at the puzzles and hidden treasures scattered throughout Telara.

Long gone are the days of seemingly endless camps or 72 player raids
slogging through hours of trash just for a shot at a contested boss in
the hope of shiny new loot. Like it or not the new era of MMOGs have
taken the loot carrot off of the string and have peeled it, cooked it,
smothered it in honey and dropped it right on our virtual plates. Rift is no
exception to this and has multiple paths available for players to earn
high quality gear doing whatever they enjoy in the world of Telara. One
of the most interesting and fun methods of obtaining blues and purples
is done via exploring some of the more hidden areas of the world and
through completing puzzles.

Every zone in Rift
has hidden within it objects that, if found, can be looted once per
character and typically contain high quality gear  although results
may vary. These are usually identified as Cairns (a man-made stone pile
commonly used as a marker or a burial tomb), and are often placed in an
area that is hard to access, requiring precise jumps or persistent wall
walking to reach. Puzzles are also a once per character event that
require varying amounts of deduction or luck to complete and will award
a lootable chest and an achievement.

We begin our series of exploration in one of the most unique zones for
treasure hunting  the underwater environs of Lake of Solace. As the
name implies, our objectives here are all located in a lake  with this
in mind it becomes beneficial to do both the puzzle and the lootables
in the same session. In addition to proximity, the main benefit to
doing these at the same time, and in a specific order is that each
successive looted treasure grants you an additional water breathing
buff that makes the route much quicker and much less likely to result
in your untimely demise.

Entering the water from the cove near the Discarded Strongbox, make
your way around the map following the color coded key provided. It will
be necessary to do some searching and pixel surfing in several of the
locations, but most objects are pretty easy to find. Once you have
finished looting all the items, make your way to the puzzle location
(located roughly between the L and the A in Lake on your map) and dive
down until you see the circle of lanterns begin to appear. Activate all
the lanterns by clicking on them as they phase in and out to complete
the puzzle and reveal the treasure chest.